John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

He was getting home earlier tonight, not for lack of work down at headquarters but for plain lack of strength. He had a couple of hours yet before sunset, to sit in the overgrown garden with the paper or to pace back and forth on the porch, making up his speech for the Dairyman’s League. But Esther’s minister was there again. Two nights almost in a row. Was the man after money? Clumly nodded his greeting, then took off his gunbelt and hat and put them away. Then he said, “I’ll be out in the garden,” and went out through the kitchen and back entryway. When he reached the bench in the garden he realized the minister had followed him out.

“Beautiful retreat you have here,” the minister said. “So restful and serene.”

“We like it,” Clumly said.

Weedpatch. The lilacs along the fence had taken over completely, so that the tulips and crocuses he’d planted five years ago — it was over a thousand bulbs he’d put in — were as shaded now as a worm down in under a rock. He hadn’t sprayed the roses once all year: there was hardly a leaf left on them. And the hollyhocks he’d had such a devil of a time getting started had taken over every corner of the garden now and were spreading out into the vacant lot behind it. In the shadow of the weeds there would be lizards and sleeping snakes.

“Nothing like Nature to take a man’s mind off his troubles,” the minister said. He came over to stand beside the bench. He said, “How are you, Fred?”

“Just fine, fine.” It came to him that the man had come out here to tell him something. Instantly he felt as he would feel in the office of the Mayor.

“Every man needs a place like this to retreat to,” the minister said. “It’s like Eden. Do you mind if I sit down?”

Clumly made room and the man in black sat down. He took off his glasses to polish them on his handkerchief, and he beamed toward the sunset as he did it. His dimple showed. “Well,” he said. “I’ve been thinking over our talk.”

He leaned his elbows on his knees and tipped his head, waiting.

“Our talk about, so to speak, the Sunlight Man. The magician, and wire-tapping.”

“I remember,” Clumly said. “Yes.”

He began to speak rapidly, smiling all the while with pleasure, like a satisfied crow. The faster he talked, the more his false teeth whistled. “It goes right to the heart of our modern predicament, doesn’t it. Especially with respect to the church in the modern world. Perhaps I don’t express myself clearly, but I’ll try to explain. You’re a good man, Chief Clumly, but you never go to church.”

Clumly straightened up a little.

“Now now,” the minister said quickly, patting Clumly’s knee, “don’t misunderstand me! I’m not canvassing for members. Nothing like it. God bless you! I’m here to talk to you, as one thinking man to another, because your remarks the other night interested me, and to tell you the truth, a man in my profession can sometimes find himself starved, truly starved, for good talk.”

Clumly leaned over his knees again tolerantly (the man was lying) and pursed his lips as a sign that he was listening.

“The church has always considered itself responsible for the welfare of the world, the spiritual welfare, that is. Yes good. Now in what, we might ask ourselves, does that responsibility consist? And to what extent are we equipped for our responsibility?”

“Mmm,” Clumly said. He nodded.

“It was once a fact of life in our society, that the decision-making forces in the community were in general people of the church — I don’t mean just legislators and judges and the like, I mean decision-making forces on every level. That situation has altered, if I’m not mistaken, particularly in the larger cities, and the presence of people like yourself in a town like Batavia — please understand I have no grudge in this, we’re talking as one thinking man to another, nothing more or less — the existence of people like yourself in small towns is an indication that the prevalent condition in the larger cities can spread. Now the question is, is this good or not good?”

Clumly tipped his head and considered. He got out a cigar.

“There’s one very serious difficulty in religion, you know. It can result in megalomania, as I call it. Are you familiar with my colleague Reverend Warshower, the Presbyterian? A good man, a fine man in many respects. But a touch of megalomania, all the same. A very righteous man. The Presbyterians usually are. Don’t you think that may have certain dangers in it — political and social, I mean?”

Clumly thought. “I may not be following you, exactly,” he said.

“Precisely. Let me try to explain. Don’t you think it’s just possible that we, as a nation, have perhaps been crippled for world affairs by a slightly excessive sense of righteousness? I mean Asia, for instance. A very difficult matter. It’s very possible, I think, that we really do involve ourselves in Asia’s problems for Asia’s sake. And yet sometimes … You see, a megalomaniac, as psychologists tell us, is a man who has done a good deal of repressing — pretending to himself that he does not actually feel what he actually feels, if you see what I mean. He feels very powerful through his rectitude, but in fact, hidden in his heart … evil.” He smiled as though evil were a great delight to him. “Or take social problems. The white and the Negro. Isn’t it just possible that the racist’s view of the Negro as a person may be nothing other than a megalomaniac projection — that is to say, a feeling of righteousness in one’s superiority to a person onto whom one has projected all one has had to repress to become what one has become. I mean: our civilization is built on work, and to do well in it we must repress our desire to loll about. We project, so to speak, this repression into the inherent nature (as we think) of the Negro. We say he’s lazy by very birth.” He paused for comment.

“Mmm,” Clumly said.

“But you see, if there’s an ounce of truth in all this I’m saying, our religion — our puritan ethic in one form or another, is at the heart of the American problem.”

“I see,” Clumly said.

“It’s a discouraging thought for a man of the cloth, you can imagine.” He looked at the setting sun.

“It would be, yes.” Clumly remembered the cigar and lit it.

“And what it comes to, of course, is this: if the church is truly to be responsible for the spiritual welfare of the world, its business must be to hunt down and expose the evil in people’s hearts. Or, our business is to contend against the very megalomania we tend to induce, if you follow my reasoning. Our business is to point the finger, so to speak, at pious hypocrisy — not simple hypocrisy of the usual sort but a psychological kind, a sort of lie in the soul.”

“Yes, I see,” Clumly said. “I’m with you.”

“Precisely,” he said. “But what a terrible dilemma! What of the invasion of privacy? What of our wire-tapping of the heart? In short, what of — as you say — our voodoo? We pry into men’s souls. It’s our stock in trade!”

Clumly nodded, a trifle startled. It was an interesting question. He stood up, studying the cigar. “What’s your opinion?” he said.

“My opinion,” the minister said, “is that I am responsible. I recognize the megalomania in myself, and I recognize that I must make perfectly sure that my motives are as pure as possible. But ultimately, when I find what we might call sin, I must act against it. I can see no reasonable alternative.”

“You may be right,” Clumly said. “I’ll have to think about it.”

“For instance.” He smiled. In the gathering dusk his smile seemed ghostly now, perhaps a little mournful. “If I discover a man who in my best judgment is destroying himself and those near and dear to him, whether that man is a member of my congregation or not, I believe it is my responsibility to worm my way into his thought. Am I right, do you think?”